Friday, May 18, 2012

A human being is a synthesis

Synthesis is a key word used be Søren Kierkegaard. But what does it mean
that man is a synthesis? Vigilius Haufniensis and Johannes Climacus (two of Søren Kierkegaards many pseudonymous authors) both write
that man is "a middle being" (“Mellomvesen”). Vigilius Haufniensis writes that
man is between animals and angels (The
Concept of Dread p. 234) and Johannes Climacus writes that man is between
things and ideas (Postscript II,
p35). Being a middle being means that man stands over him/herself as a problem.
Synthesis is a problem, or a task. The destination of the synthesis leads back
to being a self. “But to be oneself is to be concrete. But to be concrete is
neither to become finite or infinite, for that which is to become concrete is indeed
a synthesis” (Sickness unto Death,
p.30). Nevertheless a synthesis and a self is not the same thing. This is clear
in the citation below

A human being is spirit. But what is
spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that
relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself. A
human being is a synthesis of the infinite and finite, of the temporal and the
eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a
relation between two. Considered in this way, is still not a self. (Sickness unto Death, p.13)

The unspoken question is what is a human being. But this is also the
unspoken question for the whole investigation for Anti-Climacus. To say that
man is a synthesis is to point to the problem and the problem is exactly the
synthesis. A self is the fact that the relation relates to itself. The problem
is how the heterogeneousness in the synthesis is held together, but the self is
precisely what keeps it together. This means that it is the self that makes the
synthesis a synthesis.

Vigilius Haufnienisis
pulls in a third element into the self relation. This third is the spirit which
holds up the heterogeneous relation. This means that it is the spirit as being
the third element which holds the heterogeneous together. But this is exactly
what the self is doing. That a human being already is made up means that it
stands in front of the task of growing together with itself.

The fact that a human
being is a synthesis is both a condition and a normative goal. It is as a
person a middle being, put together of different proportions, but the task is
to try to get this different proportions to hang together. The synthesis has a
hidden but radical meaning, namely that a person as a middle being stands in
front of him/herself as someone else than oneself. The connection between what
a person is put together of, spirit and body, gives itself as a problem by the
fact that the body has its outmost meaning in sexuality. It is remarkable that
Vigilius Haufnenisis pulls sexuality into The
Concept of Dread as he does. He puts sexuality and history together, the
history that sets ones identity at risk. He writes “There is no history without
sexuality” (The Concept of Dread. P.
142). What that is important here is that it is in passion that a person is
considered a relation to something else than oneself, even as being someone
else to oneself, because it is in the passionate relationship that it is
removed form oneself. Subjectivity is outmost passion

Subjectivity culminates in passion;
Christendom is the paradox, paradox as passion fit nicely together and the
paradox completely in the existence uttermost best (Postscript, p 192)

And a last citation from Johannes Climacus

An existing person cannot be in two
places at the same time, to be both subject and object. The closest he can come
being two places at the same time is in passion, but passion lasts only a
moment, and passion is exactly the highest position for subjectivity (Postscript, p.166)

Sincerity most be understood as self
understanding. This is where Kierkegaard makes a definitive difference between
sincerity and reticence. Anti-Climacus says that “reticence is what one might
say is sincerity where the lock is jammed”[1]
(Sickness unto Death, p.72).
Sincerity is subjectivity which has come to itself. Sincerity is sincerity
towards existing, that is it understood with oneself. But sincerity can also be
turned towards reticence. If sincerity does not speak, communicate, then it is
reticence.

In the same way as sincerity can be
jammed, also passion can go wrong. This is very clear in the analysis of
negative phenomena done in The Works of
Love. Hate and envy are passions, but distorted, because here one circles
around oneself and at the same time looses oneself. Sincerity and passion are
not just destinations for subjectivity as a self relation. They are themselves
questions about which character the self relation has. One decides oneself in
passion and sincerity. But how? Is this a motion only personal or egocentric,
free or imprisoned? Sincerity and passion are subjectivity determined
emphatically.

A theory of synthesis

The analysis of the different characters shame can have is split in two,
a theory of synthesis and a theory of consciousness. The theory of synthesis is
negative and therefore decided normatively. The “…task is to become itself,
which can be done only through the relationship with God. To become oneself is
to become concrete. But to become concrete is neither to become finite and to
become infinite, for that which is to become concrete is indeed a synthesis” (Sickness unto Death, p.29-30). To become
concrete is to grow together with oneself (Latin: “con- crescere”). Johannes
Climacus writes that ethically speaking “…it is every individuals task to
become a whole person” (Postscript,
p.48). This is something that Vigilius Haufieniensis already has emphasized in
saying that ethics suggests itself “…as a task for everybody in such a way that
it will make him into a true and whole human being” (The Concept of Dread, p.117)

Johannes Climacus says
that “elements of subjectivity” (Postscript,
p. 49) are fantasy, thinking and emotions. Anti-Climacus refers especially to
the role which fantasy plays in the double movement of the synthesis. Fantasy
as an endlessness of creativity makes our emotions, acknowledgments and intentions
possible, seemingly through willing so, it is a question of willing to be
oneself or not.

Løgstrup (1968) says
that the core in the transcendental epistemology is the claim that fantasy is
the most basic capacity in human beings. He says that this is also
Kierkegaard’s epistemology (“Oppgør med
Kierkegaard”, p.148). With Anit-Climacus it is not a transcendental but
existential synthesis. Anti-Climacus describes a synthesis which fails and a
fantasy which is missing or has become fantastic. “…by not venturing it is so
terribly easy to lose what would be hard to lose, however much one lost by
risking, and in any case never this way, so easily, so completely, as if it
were nothing at all – namely, oneself” (Sickness
unto Death, p.34 ). The radical lose consists of losing oneself as if it
were nothing. The lost isn’t noticed or seems to be forgotten.

The finiteness of shame
has therefore a radical significance, which differs from the symmetrical form
which seems to exist between different forms for shame. The reason for is that
the synthesis is itself asymmetrical. The indefinite is, as with Hegel, the over
grasping element. It grasps over to the other, the finite and to the relation
between the indefinite and the infinite. The infinite is in this meaning the
self, as being over grasping and connecting.

Anti-Climacus says that
infiniteness of shame also can be found in the quiet lose of one self. The
person that has become fantastic for one self and therefore in shame can “seem
to be a man, be occupied with temporal matters…The greatest hazard of all,
losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it was nothing at
all” (Sickness unto Death, p.32).
Finite and infinite forms of shame are in real life mixed together and it is
not just one or the other.

The description of
possibility’s shame makes clear the difficulty in and the task of becoming
oneself. The problem is that it is just oneself one is to become. The task is
that one is bent back to oneself. In the world of fantasy the infinite
possibility comes forth. It becomes a shame when this possibility is not bent
back towards oneself. In the possibility the self runs away from itself, or as Anti-Climaus
puts it; “But if possibility outruns necessity so that the self runs away from
itself in possibility, it has no necessity to which it is to return; this is
possibility’s shame. The self becomes an abstract possibility” (Sickness unto Death, p.35-36). Possibility’s
shame lacks necessities understood as that which holds one back, or even more
precisely, one lacks “…the power to obey, to submit to the necessity in one’s
life, to what may be called one’s limitations” (Sickness unto Death, p.36).

In the description of
necessity’s shame it is in the same way made clear about the task of
possibilities or more correctly the decision for the possibility, “Necessity’s
shame is to lack possibility” (Sickness
unto Death, p.37). Necessity’s shame is describes in the same fashion as
finitudes shame as resignation, where one loses oneself. Without a possibility
even the necessary becomes distorted. The possibility becomes abstract and
loses its significance as possibility for oneself and necessity is what one
infinitely comes back to in the self-regulation.

In the interplay
between the normative destination and the negative description there is
formulated an insight which says that the task is to become oneself, and this
demands that one bends back to oneself. First in the frames of the analysis of
the theory of consciousness will it become clear that lays in ones self
presentation and in ones will a resistance against becoming oneself.

All shame is per
definition conscious. How can one then speak of a shame that is not conscious?
Is a unconscious shame really shame? Anti-Climacus says that shame at a minimum
is signified as “…a state that – yes, one could humanly be tempted almost to
say that in a kind of innocence it does not even know that it is shame” (Sickness unto Death, p.42). Shames
minimum is the unconscious shame, the person in shame is not conscious that he
is in shame. This is not actually shame. But Anti-Climacus also says “That this
condition is nevertheless shame and is properly designated as such manifests what
in the best sense of the word may be called the obstinacy of truth. Veritas est index sui et falsi[2]” (Sickness unto Death, p.42).
Merold Westphal (1996) is of the meaning that unconscious shame can be compared
with Sartres concept of “bad faith” (Mauvaise
foi) and can be understood as a generalization of Kierkegaards description
of unconscious shame.

To a certain degree one
makes oneself ignorant. In ignorance there hides a will to not wanting to know,
which Anti-Climacus describes “There is indeed in all darkness and ignorance a
dialectical interplay between knowing and willing” (Sickness unto Death, p.48). A person in shame can therefore make
himself ignorant of his own situation. This unconscious shame is not a minimum
shame understood as a simple figure at the starting line. On the contrary this
is a very complicated and dangerous possibility, namely an attempt of not
understanding oneself as spirit, “…the anxiety that characterizes
spiritlessness is recognized precisely by its spiritless sense of security” (Sickness unto Death, p.44).
Anti-Climacus identifies spiritlessness with unconscious shame when he says “An
individual is furthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is
ignorant of being in shame. But precisely this – not to be conscious of oneself
as a spirit – is despair, which is spiritlessness” (Sickness unto Death, p.44-45)

A theory of consciousness

There are two forms for actual shame. The first is being in shame for
not willing to be one self and the second is being in shame for willing to be
oneself. The first can be called a shame over weakness and the second a shame
over ones weakness. The difference lies in the degree of consciousness, and
with this begins a theory of consciousness, which differs from the description of
the not actual shame which was synthesis theoretical. Shame is really having
“lost the eternal and himself” (Sickness
unto Death, p.61). Anti-Climacus also takes and turns the figure around, he
who has the immediateness of shame, against oneself. It is a contradiction
between what the figures means to do (to feel shame over something earthly) and
then what he really does with it (feels shame over the eternal). Insight in the
shame of weakness (that it is a weakness to feel shame over something earthly)
gives a possibility for turning away from shame towards faith. But instead one
holds fast to feeling shame by not willing to acknowledge ones weakness. “The
person in shame himself understands that it is weakness to feel shame. But now,
instead of definitely turning away from shame to faith and humbling himself
under his weakness, he entrenches himself in despair and shames himself over
his weakness” (Sickness unto Death,
p.61). This leads to an ambiguous self relation, “… it hates itself in a way” (Sickness unto Death, p.62). One will not
recognize ones own weakness, but this is because one is “…being self enough to
love itself” (Sickness unto Death,
p.63). One is in one way to proud to recognize ones one weakness. This
ambiguousness is called reticence[3]
(“Indesluttethed”).

The reticence of shame
is a ambiguous self relation, because one will not be oneself and at the same
time has enough self to love oneself. In an accelerating motion this
ambiguousness increases potentially, willing oneself and not willing oneself.

This ambiguousness
reaches its climax in the demonic shame, which is “…the most intensive form for
shame: in shame to will to be oneself (Sickness
unto Death, p.73). In the demonic shame one hold on to ones shame, one
holds it “closed up in reticence” (Sickness
unto Death, p.73).

There are clearly
methodological similarities between the figures of consciousness in Sickness unto Death and Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit (1977). In
all of Kierkegaard’s works written by pseudonyms and in his upbuilding works,
phenomenology plays a decisive role. But in Sickness
unto Death the phenomenology becomes more specific, as descriptive and
analytical representation of figures of consciousness where there in the
progress is shown what shame is an where it is shown through the figures
themselves, because there is in the representation an interplay between what we
see and what the figures themselves mean.

The two sidedness which
we find in the description of the figures of consciousness creates big
problems. First the unconscious shame and then the pure immediate form for
shame. The difference between the two is that not actual shame says itself to
be free from shame, while the immediate form for shame calls itself for shame.
In the not actual shame one says to be without shame, and there can not be
created a starting figure in the process. Instead it makes itself into a
complicated and dangerous possibility, which radically defies the goal for the
process, which is to become conscious of what shame is. The fact that this
radical possibility is there already before hand, shows the negative colors of
the description.

The immediate form for
shame misunderstands itself when he means that his shame comes from an outside,
external source, but he still calls himself in shame. Being in shame over
something earthly shows itself to be shame over the eternal. Or put in another
way: shame over the eternal is what feeling shame over something earthly means.

It is important to se
how Anti-Climacus describes a figure of consciousness which already is talking
about himself. What keeps the figures together is consciousness. Here we find
an important difference between the becoming of self consciousness in Sickness unto Death and The Phenomenology of Spirit. The
progress in Sickness unto Death is
negative. It is a description of a self consciousness which comes forth, but in
the increasing motion shame also becomes more intensive and the task falls
short. The negative and broken significance of the process hangs together with
the fact that this is not only figures of consciousness. The big difference
from The Phenomenology of Spirit is
namely that shames different figures not only consist of consciousness but also
will. The basic connection between consciousness and will in shame, makes the
process continue further than necessary in order to attain insight in what it
means to feel shame. The conclusive factor in shame is will or reluctance (lack
of will) to be ones self.

Shame is a unity of
suffering and action. Anti-Climacus talks about the dialectical relation in the
weakness of shame and the strength of shame. There is namely a power in the
weakness of shame and a weakness in the strength of shame. It may seem as
though Anti-Climacus identifies weakness with suffering and strength with
action. Anti-Climacus reveals also a process where the weakness of shame is
succeeded by the strength of shame (Sickness
unto Death, p.50). Theunissen (1993) means that man must experience
(“Erfarung”) something that he suffers from if he is to feel shame. Something
brings one into shame. But shame is not just to be shamed over something (suffering),
it is also to give this something an eternal meaning (action).

Anti-Climacus starts by
being in shame over something and ends with the shame over not willing to be
oneself. The core in the analysis of shame is “…that he has lost the eternal
and himself” (Sickness unto Death,
p.61). Shame comes by the subjects’ reflection over oneself. The strength of
shame is that “The person in shame himself understands that it is weakness to
make the earthly so important, that it is a weakness to fell shame” (Sickness unto Death, p.61). But he still
goes on feeling shame, in spite of his self understanding and “…his whole point
of view is turned around: he now becomes more clearly conscious of his shame,
that he feels shame over the eternal, that he feels shame over himself” (Sickness unto Death, p.61).
Anti-Climacus holds forth that this new form for shame comes from within the
self. So does all shame really, but the difference is now that it is all about
the person in shame. He is in shame over himself for being in shame.

What does it mean that
shame is really to be in shame of oneself? Arne Grøn (1997) means that it is
possible to show a “second” ethics in Kierkegaard through reading Sickness unto Death and The Works of Love together. These to
books must be read together he says. The analysis of shame plays a central role
also in The Works of Love especially
in connection with what the right self relation consists of.

When Anti-Climacus
claims that shame is a disparity in the self relation, the questions is what
kind of self relation is in disparity. The predisposition, that shame is a self
relation which falls short, demands a closer stipulation of in which sense the
self relation is in shame. Søren Kierkegaard describes in The Works of Love how love can become shame. “Shame is the
disparity in a person’s innermost Being…Shame is lack of eternity” (The Works of Love, p.45). In shame one
makes oneself guilty. Kierkegaard understands shame as a feeling of desperation,
a hopelessness, which Anti-Climacus describes as “ …the torment of shame is
precisely this inability to die. Thus it has more in common with the situation
of a mortally sick person when he lies struggling with death and cannot die.
Thus to be sick unto death is to be
unable to die, yet not as if there were no hope of life; no, the hopelessness
is that there is not even the ultimate hope, death. When death is the greatest
danger, we hope for life, but when we learn to know the even greater danger, we
hope for death. When the danger is to great that death becomes the hope, then
shame is the hopelessness of not even being able to die” (Sickness unto Death, p.18). Shame is here stated as hopelessness.
To “…have lost the eternal” (Sickness
unto Death, p.61) means to have lost hope in that which rescues and
restores.

[1]In the Hongs translation they
translate this sentence differently, “…inclosing reserve, or what could be
called as inwardness with a jammed lock”. I disagree with their translation
firstly because “reticence” seems more correct and understandable than
“inclosing reserve” for the state of being that Kierkegaard calls
“Indesluttethed”, and secondly because “sincerity” is also more adequate than
“inwardness” for the feeling of “Inderlighed” that Kierkegaard speaks of here.
The Hongs constant use of “inwardness” instead of “sincerity” in Sickness unto Death is in my opinion a
misleading translation of the Danish word “Inderlighed”.